What is LOVE anyway..??

To love is to suffer.

To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving.

Therefore to love is to suffer, and not to love is to suffer. To suffer is to suffer.

To be happy is to love. To be happy then is to suffer.

But suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be happy one must love, or love to suffer, or suffer from too much happiness.

I hope you're getting this down.,

(Courtesy Woody Allen)

Being the valentine’s month, I “propose” to write on LOVE; that “thing” which brings out the best and the worst in us. THING!!?? Read on..

Keeping things simple, the love I’m dealing with is just the simple boy-girl variety. (Or the boy-boy/girl-girl variety if that’s what gets your motor running). Passionate love, to be exact.

So what is love anyway?

In the slightly modified words of George Bernard Shaw:

“Love consists of overestimating the differences between one woman/man and another” And I guess seasoned lovers (or married people) may find this true!

That may sound pretty unromantic, but as I went about my research on the topic (or googling, to the layman), I began to realize a pretty dampening truth.

As an emotion, Love is over-rated.

Fine…Slightly over-rated. Is that okay?

Now don’t get me wrong!! I’ve got nothing against love. I love love..!!

However,  the more I read, the more I found myself believing that “love”, is just a series of chemical reactions in the brain. The hastened heart-beat, the butterflies in the stomach feeling when we see that special someone, the sensation that they are in slow-motion...everything can be attributed the release of some chemical or the other into the brain..!!

In fact, one biological anthropologist even goes so far as to say that she can create love in a bottle if given the right chemicals..!! Boy THAT would be something I’d like to see!! I mean, making love in a bottle?? She’d need a pretty big bottle..!!

But getting back to the point I was making..

What was a natural arrangement required between males and females of the species to ensure human survival has now evolved/morphed into an emotion, so powerful that people can kill or die for it. Stories, poems, and legends about love have been recorded and celebrated by humans for generations. It is a widely held view that a life without experiencing love is not worth living. That the very essence of being human is the ability to love.

Strangely though, according to various studies, the part of the brain that is activated when you feel the rush of love is the same part which is activated by cocaine, or similar drugs..! And unlike normal drugs which take a while to affect and eventually draw the user in, love can take as little as one-fifth of a second to get a person hooked.

This got me thinking: So is love not an emotion? Is it a drug? A drug that humans have become hopelessly addicted to, through centuries of conditioning? “Love abuse” if I may call it that?

And when you think about it, The “Love” drug is so widely advertised/endorsed that no one escapes the urge to try it. The peer pressure to find it (nowadays starting even from primary school), is immense. It is socially unacceptable to avoid it. And once you get a sniff, you want more..!!

Maybe I’ll leave that question open… too many opinions out there..!! Do let me know if you have yours..

What I’ll try and do instead is acknowledge love and what it actually does - keep us going as a species - and break it down into phases. There is a natural progression to love or relationships. There are hundreds of theories out there. But I’m taking the liberty to summarize it into a simple progression, which I’ll call S-E-T. That’s Search, Emphasize and Tolerate.

Search:

Or the sex-drive. That insatiable neural itch that humans have all the time! If other members of the animal world have fixed mating cycles, humans have wayward mating super-bikes!! The sex-drive is what makes us actively look for partners to mate with; the raging hormones that tickle us every time those “special” Toms, Dicks or Harrys (or Marys, Janes and Lindas) flit into our sights.

This is the stage when we draw out our preferences. This gal? Niiicee..!! That guy? Naaaah..!! What about this one? Hmmm..!!?

Emphasize:

Or the courtship. The phase where we test out and focus on one option at a time. Finding common ground from where the next stage can begin. Often during this phase, we tend to emphasize more on the positives about our sweethearts. Negatives are swept under the carpet. The person takes a special meaning, and everything about them feels perfect. Everyone agrees this is the best phase of them all..!!

He’s so awesome; he hates wasting water. (Never mind that he bathes just once a week..!!)

She’s so cool; she’s really comfortable with my guy friends. (Never mind her drinking problem..!!)

He’s so sweet; he buys me anything I ask him. (Never mind he’s a drug dealer..!!)

You get the picture..

Tolerate:

Or the attachment. This stage normally comes after years of Searching and Emphasizing. You have gone through a reasonable number of options (either literally, or in your head). You have evaluated the negatives, and have finally locked on to the one person who you think you can live with, despite those negatives. You make the decision to finally be with him/her forever. Or at least tolerate long enough to produce off-springs and hopefully raise them well.

Depending on social pressures, some couples tolerate each other till they die (not counting those couples who actually like each other). Some separate after a fair bit of tolerating. And some break off relatively early, and begin the Search phase all over again. (Or if they have done their homework, start Emphasizing on option number 2).

The funny thing is, since we are all made so different, these three phases do not necessarily have to happen sequentially. Meaning some people can be in all three phases together!! They may have different names in their make-out, take-out and wait-out lists!!

However, depending on various inherent and external characteristics, the intensity of each phase may vary. So one person in the tolerate phase may block out the sex-drive altogether, while another person can skip the emphasize phase and jump right into toleration etc..

Okay, I’ve exceeded my word limit..!!. Gotta stop!!

So there you have it.. the three phases of love, in my limited understanding. And irrespective of which stage you are in, enjoy it..!!

READY? S-E-T? GO..!!

PS:  I had tried to replace the last letter of S-E-T with, X instead of T, you know, for a little bit of theater..!!

But Search, Emphasize and Xterminate did not seem to be the right sequence.. for the majority of us at least..!!

On a personal note, it’s my wedding anniversary this coming weekend..!! My wife’s been tolerating me for two years now!! And since I’m sure she’s going to read this sooner or later, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY BAYBE..!!

You know what they say: A man is not complete until he is married. Once married however, he is finished…!!

And so am I. With this month’s blog I mean..!!

Have a Happy Valentine’s week folks!! And like they say for Diwali & Holi, Play Safe!!